Question to film users

[Doug A]

I have been shooting film for 65+ years. In chronological order:

(1) I had the negatives developed and wet printed st the drug store.
(2) I developed and darkroom printed my own negatives.
(3) I had the negatives commercially developed and scanned and inkjet printed them myself.
(4) I developed my own negatives, digitized them with a flatbed scanner, and inkjet printed them myself.
(5) I now develop my own negatives, digitize them with a digital camera, and inkjet print them myself.

Looking through all of my prints in their storage boxes I find that every step above resulted in prints I prefer to the older ones.

 

[Evergreen States]

I send all my film to a laboratory to have them develop and scan it. They use a Noritsu HS 1800 and they send me TIFF files over the cloud. After that, they send it to another company that cuts and archives the negatives.

I do not have the space, patience or physical stamina to develop and scan my own film. I'd much rather leave it in the hands of professionals.

 

[markjwyatt]

I have been shooting film for 65+ years. In chronological order:

(1) I had the negatives developed and wet printed st the drug store.
(2) I developed and darkroom printed my own negatives.
(3) I had the negatives commercially developed and scanned and inkjet printed them myself.
(4) I developed my own negatives, digitized them with a flatbed scanner, and inkjet printed them myself.
(5) I now develop my own negatives, digitize them with a digital camera, and inkjet print them myself.

Looking through all of my prints in their storage boxes I find that every step above resulted in prints I prefer to the older ones.

Is that because your printing technology got better, or you became a better photographer over 65+ years?

 

[zuiko85]

I did wet print, since 1971, but never enough to get good at it. Takes a lot of work prints to come up with a finished one. Now I’ll occasionally contact print 4x5 paper negs and that is about it.

 

[Doug A]

Is that because your printing technology got better, or you became a better photographer over 65+ years?

It's all down to the technology. Some of the best prints I am making today are from negatives I shot in the 1960's.

 

[webOSUser]

I send out my color film and used to have the lab scan it until the local lab claimed that a software upgrade on their scanner caused the small scans to go from 5MP to 0.25MP.
I process my own B&W and scan it at home. Scanner varies from a Epson V600 for 120. 35mm is scanned on a Wolverine F2D or my DSLR. Depends on my mood.
I have an Essential Film Holder and use Negative Lab Pro to invert the negatives.
Steve W

 

[Ambro51]

I develop BW then photograph the neg with the iPhone, flip colors, tinker with it a bit and call it a day.

 

[Alpsman]

I'm scanning my negatives since there are proper filmscanners available. I dont have place for a darkroom and i dont have place for piles of prints.

 

[BWF]

I develop b&w 35mm and 4x5 at home and send out color and 120 to Indie Film Lab. Sometimes I have them scan everything, sometimes not (they have good prices for process only, but their scans are also really good and worth the price). If I digitize at home, I use a Valoi for 35mm and 120, with a digital camera on a copy stand. Valoi is the best I’ve seen for making the digitizing process efficient with a camera.

I have a wet darkroom and print only once a month or so. I use Eco Pro chemicals for both developing and printing, which have a few less chemicals in them. The developer is like Xtol and I really like it.

 

[dmr]

Scan. Have not had any lab prints done in years.

 

[newst]

I send my film to 'The Darkroom' to be developed and scanned. The scans are available for download about a week before the Postal Service delivers the negatives. At that point, if there is an image that I want a darkroom print of I can order it from them. Otherwise, I can tweak the scans in Lightroom and inkjet print them out myself.

 

[muser53]

I scan all my film with either a Nikon Super Coolscan 8000ED or a 5000ED. The 8000 does what little 2 1/4 I shoot and the 5000 I use for all my 35mm images. The 5000is faster and a bit more accurate in every way than the 8000 for 35mm. As Nikon stopped supporting Nikon scan quite a while ago and not wanting to bother with a legacy computer set up just to scan I switched to Vuescan. While the user interface is not as good (IMHO) as Nikon scan the final results are also excellent. The only draw back I can report is that scanning Kodachromes is tedious. Other than that I don't find the process difficult. Given that there is no set up and take down time I find myself happy to process a few images late in the day. That is something I would rarely (except in my student days) do when I had access to a darkroom.